Plastic storage bags, which incorporate interlocking strip fasteners (“zip lock” bags), are a consumer staple and in wide use for a myriad of business and household applications. These types of bags are re-sealable, and provide a closure mechanism that is typically secure and affords an airtight and moisture proof seal. The strip fastener inherent design characteristics and associated attributes make these bags an ideal storage solution for items such as food, medications, and all assortments of small hardware items. Filling these bags is usually a manual process, which requires the mouth of the bag to be held in an open position while the bag is filled. Keeping these bags open during the initial stages of a bag filling process has long been recognized as a problem. Without external or internal structural support to hold the bag open, a user must either hold the bag open with one hand while filling with the other, or find an assistant to hold it open. In applications where multiple bags must be filled, the effort can result in a serial, labor intensive and time-consuming process. The process is further complicated in cases where the fill material must be sorted into different bags concurrent with the filling process.
Several types of filling devices for small plastic bags have been proposed. These are targeted to filling and sorting small lightweight items such as medications. Systems for labeling and storing plastic bags containing medications for subsequent dispensing have also been proposed. These devices and systems include:
1) Mosley (U.S. Pat. No. 5,752,371—1998) is a bag loading device for sorting and storing in bags various medicaments and the like having a plurality of independent pivotal elongated funnels arranged longitudinally in two parallel rows. The disadvantages of the Mosley devise include its complexity and size. It requires multiple moving parts to support the engagement and disengagement of the bags, and a separate variable height bar to support the bottom of the bags. In contrast to this invention, its complexity will result in higher production costs, and the number of steps required to operate the devise will result in more time required to fill the equivalent number of bags. In addition, its size and projected footprint is large, relative to the size and number of bags it can handle at one time.
2) Gibson (U.S. Pat. No. 6,761,010—2004) is a medication organizing system for allowing patients to prepare hermetically sealed dosage packages to set up their medication regime for a given period of time. The device includes seven hoppers to allow the patient to prepare a set of hermetically sealed medication packages for a given time for each day of the week. After being filled, each package in the set of seven packages is hermetically sealed simultaneously by loading the set into a sealing unit and pulling a lever. This organizing system is similar to Mosley, in that it suffers the same size, complexity and cost issues. In addition, it is limited to seven filling hoppers and is targeted to creating hermetically sealed one-time use bags, as opposed to re-sealable/re-useable bags.
3) Holmberg (U.S. Pat. No. 6,293,403—2001) is a vitamin organizing, storing and dispensing system to organize, store and dispense a plurality of tablets in a predetermined therapeutic regime comprising a plurality of sets of separate packets corresponding to the days of the week or the dates of the month configured to store at least one tablet therein wherein each set of separate packets comprises a subset of the packets corresponding to the time of day or date the plurality tablets for the corresponding day or date are to be administered and a packet organizer to arrange the sets and subsets of packets sequentially by day or date and time of day or date for each corresponding day or date for selectively dispensing and consumption of the appropriate tablet or tablets at the proper time and day or date. While this invention provides a system for labeling and organizing bag contents for storage and subsequent use (dispensing), it assumes that the bags have been previously filled. It does not address sorting or filling medications into the appropriate bags.
4) Ganti (U.S. Pat. No. 8,132,672—2012) is a flexible, compact, and securely closed pill pouch pocket packet folder designed for secure handling, has multiple pockets, containing securely stored pouches for easy and orderly storing and retrieving of pills or similar small items, as when needed, for home or travel. Like Holmberg, this invention provides a system for organizing bag contents for storage and subsequent use (dispensing), it does not address sorting medications into the appropriate bags during the filling process.